The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

Ouch, she thought again as that landed.

“I guess the point, the real truth behind all the extraneous noise, is that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” Bristol admitted.

And it hurt, but she didn’t take her words back.

“The Grand Tour, from what we can tell from here. All over Europe like the fancy ladies did it back in the day.” Margie’s smile grew less serene and much warmer. “Your father and I’ve been tracking it on a map every time you turn up in a new city.”

Bristol wiped at her face. She blew out a shaky breath. Then she kicked her shoes off so she could press her toes down into the dirt between the thick roots that served as the sides of her chair.

“Everything used to be so clear to me,” she confessed. “I knew, always, that I wanted to get out of this town. That Ohio wasn’t good enough, that the Midwest was too confining, and for some reason I decided my ticket out had to be academics. Once I decided that I was going to be an academic star, that was all I thought about. Because you can always study more, so anything you dedicate yourself to is within reach. If you want it enough. So that’s what I did. Undergraduate degree. Master’s degree. Doctorate. That was the path I was on and I charged straight down it.”

She was staring at her toes, pressed into the dirt the way she’d liked to do when she was little. Except her toes were pedicured now, because that was one of the parts of her maintenance responsibilities that she actually happily had performed regularly. Because there was something about chipped nail polish that made her feel anything but pretty. A glance at her mother’s toes, the same unchipped, glossy, cherry red they always were, suggested where she might have gotten that.

“I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I needed to figure out what to do after I was done with all that charging around,” she said.

Margie made a supportive sort of noise, and Bristol couldn’t believe she’d forgotten how comforting it was to simply sit with her mother. To feel the security of her presence, solid and unmistakable at her shoulder. The quiet side of Margie, not all tinsel and cider and belting out Christmas carols into the December night.

Though, if she was honest, Bristol loved her mother as an elf, too.

“I can’t even remember what made me decide that I needed to push myself academically in the first place,” Bristol continued now, not sure if it was all the sobbing or the sunshine that made her feel almost drunk. Hollowed out in a new way, that might as easily turn to more sobbing—or silliness. “Do you?”

“Of course I know, honey,” Margie said calmly. “School was the one thing that didn’t interest your sister at all. So you claimed it as yours and dug in.”

Bristol blinked at that. She tried to make what her mother had just said make some sense, but couldn’t. “What do you mean?”

“You know Indy.” Margie laughed. “She used to drive you crazy. When you first moved in together your father and I joked that you’d likely kill her within a week.”

“I still might kill her. That’s a given.”

Margie drew her knees up and laughed again. “When you were little she would always follow you around, wanting to do whatever you were doing whenever you were doing it. You hated it. Anything you tried to do—any activity, any craft, any book you wanted to read—in came Hurricane Indy to do it right along with you. She wanted you to appreciate her efforts, naturally. But you did not.”

“I don’t remember having any kind of sibling rivalry!” Bristol frowned, thinking back. And she wasn’t sure if she was shocked or if she found it all funny. “Are you sure?”

Her mother gave her a look, then laughed. “You are a very methodical thinker, Bristol. At a certain point, it must have occurred to you that you couldn’t order Indy away from whatever it was you were doing. Little sisters are notoriously terrible at taking that hint. So you picked one thing after the next until you found something she didn’t want to do. School.”

Bristol felt her mouth drop open. “This is very unflattering, Mom. I was sure you were going to tell me that the entirety of southwestern Ohio was struck down in wordless awe at the force of my intellect. That they begged me to excel, and so I did.”

“There was some awe at the force of your will, maybe.” Margie considered. “And your willingness to push yourself. But your sister is the fighter. You were always quieter. When Indy would blow up, it would be a big storm, but it would blow over and all would be well. But not you. You like to hold things tight and hide them away until all the fault lines are gathered inside and you feel you have no choice but to make the earth move.”

And here, under the shade of her favorite tree, Bristol didn’t have to hide. She didn’t have to pretend. She pressed her hand to her chest, where it hurt the most. And she finally accepted that the hollow thing she’d been pretending was nothing more than an empty space tucked away in there was her heart.

“Ouch,” she said again.

“Here’s what I’m sure of,” her mother said, and reached over to put her hand on Bristol’s leg. The way she had a million times before and would a million times again. It was like an anchor. It was a version of the roots around her, tying her to the earth, to this place even if only in her memories, to her mother and to herself. “I have never known you, Bristol Marie March, not to get exactly what you want. Once you put your mind to it, that’s that.”

Bristol’s eyes felt wet